Thursday, February 01, 2018

In 2013, the Astros chose Appel with the No. 1 pick, one selection ahead of Chicago Cubs MVP third baseman Kris Bryant. They signed him to a $6.35 million bonus after his senior year, when he posted a 2.12 ERA, struck out 130 batters and walked just 23 in 106.1 innings. Ben Reiter of Sports Illustrated called him “as risk-free a pitcher pick as has ever been made,” while Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow deemed Appel, “the most significant investment the Astros have made in their history in an ...

“Everything that happens in the game of baseball, as far as how things are done financially, is bargained into a collective bargaining agreement,” says Moss. “The way free agency runs, the way draft money is allotted, the way international signing bonus is allotted. Everything is bargained.”

Down with the generous mogul! That’s going to be the slogan in the National League. Charlie Weeghman, president of the Chicago Cubs, is to blame, and he is to be the target of action by his brother magnates when they meet in New York next week.

President Tener will offer an amendment to the National League’s constitution, seeking to prevent any magnate from making overtures to a player of a rival team or of expressing in public a desire to buy or trade a ...

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

I’m not a hardcore anti-Hosmer guy. In the *right deal* he could be a quality acquisition. The deals he already has on the table, however, would be past my comfort zone, if I were the guy writing the checks.

Hosmer seeking deal longer than seven years
The representatives of free-agent first baseman Eric Hosmer have continuously been “pushing for a contract of more than seven years,” a source told MLB.com’s Jon Paul Morosi on Wednesday.

NEW YORK—Fifty years after the Dodgers drafted him, Davey Lopes said on the Newsmakers podcast that he is retiring after 45 consecutive years in the Major Leagues.

“I’m not doing much. I’m retired, taking it easy,” said Lopes, who last worked for the Nationals as a first-base coach in 2017. “It was not a difficult decision to make, but one I was kind of hesitant to make. But it all works out. I got the opportunity to play, manage or coach for a long, long time. I’m extremely thankful. I was ...

A novel scheme by which a batsman would be permitted to steal first base any time the ball is in play has been advanced by a Kansas City lawyer. This attorney has written several letters to Garry Herrmann, chairman of the National Commission, and Herrmann has been interested to the extent of sending copies of his correspondence on the subject to his fellow members of the commission—Tener and Johnson—asking for an opinion of the scheme.

The union was capable of creating the camp—which at that time, really was without precedent, as far as Fehr knows—on short notice because it had already laid the groundwork for a more ambitious strike contingency plan. “The camp was originally never intended to be a camp,” says Price, who helped spearhead the MLBPA’s strike contingency plans, which started to coalesce in December ’94. Instead, the union intended to bring back a time-honored ...

Monday, January 29, 2018

This is a stupid idea. The MLBPA helped make young players even cheaper than they were. It then went along with increased penalties and low thresholds for Luxury Taxes. It shouldn’t be shocking that smarter front offices figured out they’d be better off playing more young, cheap players instead of older, more expensive ones.

Boras has proposed draft bonuses for winning games. If a small-market team wins at least 78 games, it receives $2 million more to spend in the draft while the other teams ...

Sorry, Martin was no prize either. His numbers only look acceptable if you accept today’s dearth of good catchers as the new norm.

Martin hit .221/.343/.388 with 13 home runs last year—respectable numbers in line with the MLB averages for the position. And while 91 games represented a dropoff in playing time for Martin, only one catcher older than him appeared in more games: Yadier Molina.

One thing he didn’t note, teams are paying more for relievers. If starters aren’t pitching as many innings it makes sense to reapportion where they are spending money. Of course, relievers aren’t complaining about this shift.

Chief Wahoo, a cartoonish caricature of a Native American that has assumed several forms over the years, first appeared on the Indians’ uniforms in 1948. In recent decades various groups across North America have appealed to the team to renounce the logo, to no avail. But over the past year the commissioner of baseball, Rob Manfred, has pressured Paul Dolan, Cleveland’s chairman and chief executive, to make a change.

An English cricketer discusses baseball in the Bridgeport Times, January 29, 1918:

I am criticized for referring to the pitcher’s play or duties as “monotonous,” yet in the same breath a critic informs me that “sometimes a pitcher has to play for nine innings, unless he is replaced by a spare pitcher.” Well, if that is not monotony, I know it not.
...
For these reasons alone baseball can never be classed in the same category as cricket, and never will be by anyone who has ever played much ...

Sunday, January 28, 2018

Frustration is boiling over around Major League Baseball due to this winter’s slow moving free agent market. And don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s only coming from players without deals. Los Angeles Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen, who just inked a five-year, $80 million last winter, is just as irked as anyone by the lack of market-moving deals, and he’s not against doing something rash to turn things around.

BALTIMORE—Star infielder Manny Machado made it clear this offseason he wants to play shortstop, his natural position, and manager Buck Showalter confirmed at Orioles FanFest on Saturday that the club is granting his request.

Machado has played much of his first six seasons in the Major Leagues at third base while J.J. Hardy manned short, but Hardy’s departure for free agency this offseason opened up the spot full time for the 25-year-old Machado. Tim Beckham, who the Orioles acquired in a July ...

Saturday, January 27, 2018

There really are a lot of great third basemen playing right now. Catchers, not so much.

Jones had his own knee problems near the end of his career, but still ranks seventh in career games at third base. Asked how he did it, Jones laughed and said, “Blessed.” The current crop of star third basemen — Nolan Arenado, Kris Bryant, Josh Donaldson, Evan Longoria, Manny Machado, Anthony Rendon — could only hope to be so lucky.

I can understand how individual players could miss this trend. How the MLBPA didn’t grasp the importance of this change is beyond me? Marvin Miller and Donald Fehr would have grasped the importance of macro movement on this level.

“Basically,” wrote an AL executive in an e-mail, “the gap between Major League veterans being a ‘known commodity’ and Minor League players being ‘unknowns’ may be shrinking due to a greater ability to study and analyze the Minor League game.”

Will they need to trade excess outfield talent for pitching to make the Yelich deal and Cain signing smart?

“It’s a confluence of a number of different factors,” Stearns said. “We knew we would have an off-season like this at some point. I couldn’t have told you whether it would be this off-season, next off-season or the off-season after, but we knew at some point we would make significant outside acquisitions to supplement our team.

All of it is part of a bigger battle to come, one that is going to define the short remainder of this offseason, hang over the 2018 season and come to a head next November. The animus is strong, the players fixing for a fight, ownership inviting one. It’s real enough that one executive this week wondered if the sides might consider opening up the collective-bargaining agreement in the near term and giving the union financial concessions in exchange for labor ...